Synonyms
Definition
Social information processing refers to the sequence of mental mechanisms that occur as humans extract social information (i.e., emotional expressions on faces) from the environment using a series of cognitive systems (e.g., attention, memory). Such systems convert or modify the incoming social information in systematic ways in order to facilitate interpretation and understanding of the social world.
Introduction
What is the process humans use to perceive, interpret, and predict others’ thoughts, intentions, and actions? As humans, we encounter a plethora of social stimuli in our environments every day and utilize a series of highly adaptive systems (i.e., attention, perception, memory) to make sense of the incoming information. Together, these systems systematically alter the information in order to make it interpretable. Ultimately, the aim of using these systems and, more generally, of social information processing is to allow us to make...
References
Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 2, pp. 89–195). New York: Academic Press.
Bargh, J. A. (1994). The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, intention, efficiency, and control in social cognition. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 1, pp. 1–40). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bower, G. H. (1967). A multicomponent theory of the memory trace. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 1, pp. 230–325). New York: Academic Press.
Brewer, W. F., & Nakamura, G. V. (1984). The nature and functions of schemas. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 1, pp. 119–160). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Cherry, E. C. (1953). Some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and with two ears. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 25(5), 975–979.
Fazio, R. H., & Olson, M. A. (2003). Implicit measures in social cognition research: Their meaning and use. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 297–327.
Fiske, S. T., & Linville, P. W. (1980). What does the schema concept buy us? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6(4), 543–557.
Hastie, R. (1981). Schematic principles in human memory. In E. T. Higgins, C. P. Herman, & M. Zanna (Eds.), Social cognition: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 1, pp. 39–88). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Treisman, A. M. (1969). Strategies and models of selective attention. Psychological Review, 76, 282–289.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Garrido, C.O. (2018). Social Information Processing. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1835-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1835-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences